The next morning, in front of the Combat Dungeon, Riven stood in the cold.
Technically it wasn't that cold, but the place gave off a temperature anyway — the kind of spiritual chill that said, bad decisions were made here. The building itself looked like a sunken fortress: dark stone, carved steps, half buried in the mountain like the sect had tried to hide it and failed.
Or maybe it hadn't failed. Maybe this was the plan.
Beside him, Vaern adjusted the fingerless gloves over his clawed hands, golden eyes fixed on the doorway ahead.
"Did you ever visit the Combat Dungeon before?"
Riven shook his head. "No."
Vaern glanced down the stone corridor as they stepped inside.
"Then steel yourself."
The air inside was still. Tense. Not quiet — the kind of silence that waited.
They passed a few doors on the left, each leading into sparring rooms. Most were closed. One wasn't.
Riven slowed as he heard it.
A thud. Then another. Then something wet.
Vaern didn't stop. "Don't look if you don't want to see."
Naturally, Riven looked.
Inside, a disciple was getting flattened — blood on the floor, face half-swollen, robes torn at the collar. He was still conscious, technically. Mostly.
His opponent was a taller boy, an inner disciple, with no expression, rhythmically driving fists into his gut like he was tenderizing meat.
Riven stared. "Why doesn't he stop?"
Vaern didn't pause. "He doesn't have to."
Riven blinked.
"He volunteered," Vaern said. "Merit points for being a fighting buddy. No interference. No limits. He signed the waiver."
Another punch landed — loud, wet. The downed disciple coughed red.
"He just got unlucky."
Vaern's voice stayed even. "Some people request a fighting buddy to get better."
Another crunch echoed from the room. Riven flinched. So did the disciple's nose.
"Some," Vaern added, "come for fun."
He kept walking.
And as they passed more rooms, Riven was reminded of something once again: this was not a nice sect.
A few minutes later, they exited out the back, where a stone path led to an open field. Circular. Scorched in places. Grass uneven from too many bodies hitting it too hard.
An outside training ring.
Vaern reached into his sleeve and handed Riven a scroll. The cover was blank except for tight calligraphy at the top: Basic Martial Arts — Vol. I.
"This is mine," Vaern said. "Wrote it myself. Refined from the years I spent trying not to die on the northern plains."
Riven unrolled it.
The diagrams were clean — a single figure in sequence, frozen mid-motion. Kicks, guards, punches. No flashy moves. No elemental blasts. Just form.
Each step was annotated — foot placement, hip rotation, strike angle, center of mass.
No fancy flourishes. No explosions.
Just violence. Refined.
Riven frowned. "There's no qi use?"
"That's Volume II," Vaern said. "You don't get qi until you learn how to move."
Riven looked down at the scroll again. "So this is… all of them? Basic Punch, Basic Kick, all that?"
"Yeah," Vaern said without shame. "I split them up when I submitted them to the Martial Pavilion. They counted as separate techniques, so I got more merit points."
He's more sly than he looks.
"Beastkin are naturally stronger than humans," Vaern said. "But we come up short in one thing — qi."
He flexed his clawed hand slowly, like he was remembering.
"When I used to fight with high-grade F-rank techniques, I could manage it once. Maybe twice. After that? I was tapped. Meanwhile, some human cultivator in the same realm could fire the same skill four, five times without flinching."
He crouched, claw sketching a jagged line in the dirt.
"That kind of trade-off doesn't work in real combat. So I had to improvise."
He jabbed a dot into the dirt.
"Most people focus on the qi. Flooding their moves. More qi more power."
Another dot. Smaller.
"I did the opposite. I built everything around my body. Used just a flicker of qi. A smear. Only at the exact moment it'd matter."
He drew an arrow, cutting sharply up from the smaller dot.
"Because of my physical strength, even a tiny boost let me break the ceiling. Made a normal strike hit like a high-grade technique. And I could throw that same hit five, six, seven times without crashing."
He stood, brushing dirt from his knees.
"That's what this scroll teaches. Controlled force. Minimal qi. Maximum effect."
He paused, then looked at Riven.
"For a human, these might just seem like average mid-grade techniques. And maybe that's all they'll ever be for you."
He raised a clawed finger.
"But your master and I aren't training you to memorize moves. We're teaching you the logic behind them — the principle. The mechanics. The idea that sometimes, less is better."
His tone was steady, but there was weight behind it now.
"The way qi is applied in this system — subtle, precise — it's not just about saving strength now. It lays the groundwork for later realms. For stages where control matters more than brute force."
He turned away.
"But before we can build on that — you need the basics. No qi. No shortcuts. Just clean, proper form."
And so began the most exhausting training Riven had had till now.
On the first day, he learned that everything he did was slightly wrong.
Not dramatically. Just… off.
His stance was too tense. His weight distribution, uneven. His punches traveled further than they needed to — wasting motion, leaking power.
And Vaern let him know. He always corrected him.
A sharp prod to the shoulder. A slap to the wrist. A sudden sweep to the ankles when Riven's balance slipped.
"Your elbow's too wide," he said once.
Then knocked Riven's arm off course mid-punch.
"Now imagine your opponent does that, but faster. And with a sword in the other hand."
By the time the sun dipped low, Riven's legs ached from holding the same stances over and over — until they stopped wobbling.
On the second day, he stopped thinking.
Not because he was confident — but because thinking hurt more than moving.
His body responded before he could reason it out. Which was the point.
"Too much brain," Vaern muttered, nudging his foot into a better pivot.
"You're not solving a riddle — you're trying to kill someone."
He was shown how to punch without overextending, how to move without dragging his back foot, how to tighten his core and redirect force from his hips instead of his shoulders.
It was repetition. Brutal, endless repetition.
But by dusk, his punches no longer dragged. His feet no longer slipped.
His body was learning, even if the rest of him felt like collapsing.
And he wondered how he had ever managed to beat that bear before.
On the third day, the corrections slowed.
Not because Vaern had run out of things to fix — but because Riven had started fixing them himself.
He shifted his own stance when it felt wrong. Adjusted his own breathing.
And when his strikes landed — even on air — he could feel the difference.
Each motion snapped cleaner. Sharper. Real.
He hadn't used a single thread of qi since the training started.
But somehow, he felt stronger than he did when he was using it.
When they finally stopped, Riven was soaked in sweat, mud streaked up his arm, knuckles raw from practice strikes against the padded post.
Vaern stood across from him, arms crossed.
"You've got the basics," he said. "Barely. Now we need to hone them in combat."
He turned away.
"I'll get someone for you to fight."
And just like that, he was gone.
Riven exhaled — slow, deep. The kind of breath you take when you're not sure if your ribs will cooperate.
A break.
For the first time in hours, he wasn't being corrected, struck, swept, or told that his stance had offended physics.
Not that he'd had much time to rest anyway.
The last three days had consisted of exactly three things: sleeping, eating, and getting kicked in increasingly educational ways.
Also getting stared at more and more strangely by Mira whenever he returned home.
Not much else.
But he wasn't going to stop. Not now.
Not with the Trial ahead.
Not with the city waiting on the other side.
Not with a chance — no matter how small — to finally find out where the hell he was and how to get back.
It's not like he was in that much pain, anyway.
This was nothing compared to what he'd experienced before.
He had lost an arm, after all.
He rolled his shoulder. Took another breath.
Waited.
Stop making me wait.
Tired of standing still, he dropped into a stance again and started drilling.
Punch. Step. Kick. Reset. Again.
A few minutes later, footsteps returned.
Vaern reappeared at the edge of the training field, a second figure beside him.
Not as tall as Vaern, but definitely taller than Riven. Lean. Maybe sixteen. Worn outer disciple robes. Sharp eyes.
And a smile that looked way too happy to be here.
Vaern gestured between them. "This is Yel. Outer disciple. Seven years in the sect. Plenty of field experience."
The boy gave a lazy salute.
"He'll be your sparring partner," Vaern continued. "He gets ten merit points every time he knocks you out."
Riven blinked, and Yel cracked his knuckles.
"Oh, I love when Vaern has jobs."
Riven's eyebrow twitched, but he still extended a hand in greeting.
And then a fist hit him in the face.
Hard.